Posted: 08/18/2000

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

(1964)

by Andrew Lewicky

The mother of all black comedies and perhaps film genius’ Stanley Kubrick’s finest hour.

Wherever you are right now, here, in the year 2000, you’re within easy range of thousands of nuclear missiles, any one of which could, if launched, instantly annihilate you, your friends, and all your loved ones. As human beings, we cope with this horrific reality the only way we know how: denial. We block Hiroshima, the arms race, and mutually assured destruction from our consciousness. We pretend it doesn’t exist.

In 1964, a up-and-coming director named Stanley Kubrick sought to penetrate our collective denial with a daring film called Dr. Strangelove. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther said Dr. Strangelove “is beyond question the most shattering sick joke I’ve ever come across.” Yet he also called the film one of the cleverest and most incisive satires of military folly ever on the screen.

Dr. Strangelove begins when a mad Air Force General, Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), launches an unauthorized nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. Convinced that the Russians are plotting to “Sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids,” Ripper orders his squad of B-52’s to bomb Soviet targets, expecting that American President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) will order a full strike against the Russians rather than suffer an inevitable and devastating counterattack.

Upon learning of Ripper’s sneak attack, jingoistic General Buck Turgidson (a boisterous George C. Scott), head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advocates exactly that to American President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers). President Muffley instead calls the Russian Premiere, thinking honesty will be the best policy. In one of cinema’s great monologues, Muffley/Sellers attempts to break the news to the Premiere via telephone:

“Dmitri, you know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb? The BOMB, Dmitri. The hydrogen bomb. Well now, what happened is, one of our base commanders, he had a sort of, well, he went a little funny in the head. You know. Just a little…funny. And he went and did a silly thing. Well, I’ll tell you what he did, he ordered his planes…to attack your country. Well, let me finish, Dmitri. Let me finish, Dmitri. Well, listen, how do you think I feel about it? Can you imagine how I feel about it, Dmitri? Why do you think I’m calling you? Just to say hello?”

Dmitri informs Muffley that Russian scientists have built a doomsday machine that will automatically trigger an apocalyptic response to any nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. General Turgidson calls the doomsday scare, “Commie bull.” President Muffley tries desperately to recall General Ripper’s renegade bombers. Sensing failure, however, he also consults German scientist and weapons strategist Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers again), who advises they prepare for the end of the world by creating underground living chambers to house high-ranking American men, along with a breeding pool of ten times as many women, selected for their attractiveness, to repopulate America.

Dr. Strangelove is both a hilariously funny movie and a deeply disturbing one. Even as the scenes become more and more outlandish, the basic, undeniable plausibility of the plot remains intact. By using humor to convey his message—traditionally a mechanism of escape—Stanley Kubrick brilliantly penetrates our denial, forcing us to contemplate the very real nuclear world we have all helped create. Deep in the cold war, in 1964, this was a monumental accomplishment. Today, Kubrick’s film reminds us we cannot make the horror of nuclear war go away merely by ignoring it, and that so long as humans remain at the controls of these terrible weapons, anything can happen.

Andrew Lewicky is a Los Angeles-based writer and story analyst.

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